Proposals to keep the Homer, Seldovia, Seward, Kenai and Skyview Middle School pools open are under review by the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District. 

By Delcenia Cosman

Reporter, Homer Independent Press

With less than two weeks remaining until school district funding of local pools ends, peninsula communities await decisions on proposals submitted to the Kenai Peninsula Borough and KPB School District to keep those facilities open.

The KPBSD Board of Education planned last year to cut pool managers as a cost-saving measure in the face of a $17 million budget deficit. That decision was later reversed in what then-board president Zen Kelly called a “one-year reprieve” — and true to that word, the district moved again this year to close school pools as the battle for adequate state funding for schools continues.

The district expects to save nearly $1.4 million per year in their general fund, according to KPBSD Director of Planning and Operations Kevin Lyon, if the pools are not filled or operational. Without alternative avenues for funding and management, all district-operated swimming pools will close July 1.  As that deadline looms, the Kachemak Swim Club is working to keep the Kate Kuhns Aquatic Center at Homer High School open, with some help from the City of Homer and South Peninsula Hospital.

The City of Homer and SPH have each committed $20,000 to KSC for operating the Homer pool, pending a finalized agreement with the school district.

The KSC board of directors declined to share their full proposal with the Homer Independent Press. 

Derotha Ferraro, director of public relations at South Peninsula Hospital, said that both KPB Mayor Peter Micciche and Homer Mayor Rachel Lord invited SPH into the “solutions conversation.” 

“It wasn’t the swim club asking SPH for help, it was the city and borough working together on a solution to keep the pool open,” Ferraro said. “This is a really critical juncture … we’re just very happy that we can be part of that community support to help bridge this transition.”

Lord said her role to date has been to support the conversation between KSC and the borough.

“I’ve been … keeping the interest of the swim club and the broader community in mind of what hopefully could be sustainable to draft a one-year contract,” she said.

Both Lord and Micciche said the current proposals are one-year agreements.

Micciche called the proposals “pilot projects.”

Acknowledging the major lift that Kachemak Swim Club is making to keep the pool from closing after June 30, Lord said, “I think everybody is like, ‘Yep, this is a one-year proposal, and we will see how it goes.’”

Lord also said that as a parent with children in KPBSD schools, she’s been an “ardent supporter” of the district and understood that they were firm on finally ending district funding for the pools. 

At the same time, she expressed some consternation with the school district’s stance that continued pool operations would be “up to the communities.”

“I communicated with the school board and with the superintendent, what do you mean by ‘communities?’ You have pools that aren’t in municipal boundaries, like city boundaries. The Homer pool is within the city boundaries, but it’s used by the school and by people across the lower peninsula. I don’t know that ‘the community’ equals ‘city,’ and I don’t know that the community equals ‘swim club,’” she said. 

She praised the Kachemak Swim Club for their efforts to keep Homer’s pool open.

“(Kachemak) Swim Club is awesome — they have a vested interest for the community to keep that facility open, and they really stepped up to the plate,” she said. “It’s a big lift for the swim club.” 

KSC board president Stephen Overdorf — who is stepping down in July due in part, he said, to frustration in dealing with local government to preserve the pool — called the swim club’s involvement “a last-ditch effort.”

“We’re doing it because no other government agency — the city (of Homer) hasn’t stepped up and said they’re going to do it, the borough hasn’t stepped up and said they’re going to do it, and the school district obviously is cutting it,” he said. “That’s really why the Kachemak Swim Club is in the position of trying to get something worked out.”

He noted that the City of Seward and City of Kenai have both put forth proposals to fund and retain their pools. 

Lord said that the City of Homer cannot afford to fund the pool on its own. 

“I don’t feel like it is appropriate or available for the city, within our revenues coming from our taxpayers within our municipal boundaries, to take on line items for the pool,” she said, noting that the Homer City Council moved away from line-item funding nonprofit organizations years ago.

“The revenues aren’t there,” she said.

On the council’s recent decision to provide one-time funding to KSC, Lord said that part of her rationale for bringing that commitment forward and supporting it is because the city previously allocated line-item funding for the Kevin Bell Arena and the SPARC.

“I can find a path of rational decision-making that makes it feel like we could spend some money on the pool for this short period of time,” she said. 

Overdorf called the funding “limited.”

“The way I’ve kind of looked at it is that $40,000 really provides around four hours of lap swim a day for the year, and for open swim on Friday nights,” Overdorf said. “We’re going to have to account for the insurance, training, the lifeguards, pool chemicals … It’s really an operation that has to be subsidized in this community.

“Without help — substantial help — it doesn’t happen. It’s not a money maker.” 

KSC also submitted an application to the Rural Health Transformation Program for funding to help facilitate the transition of operational responsibility, as well as provide future expanded programming and access. The application came back as “deferred or not advanced.”

“There isn’t anything more that the swim club could do than what we’re already offering in this proposal,” Overdorf said. “I’ve always wished it would just stay with the school district. I think that’s where it belongs.”

Ultimately, he said, the more demand on the pool, the more money it will take to run it. 

Lyon said Wednesday that closure or handing off of the Homer pool would save the district nearly $200,000 a year from their general fund. Closure or transfer of the Seldovia pool would save the district more than $87,000 a year.

He noted that the district is trying to avoid having to drain the pools and then later refill and reheat them. While pool maintenance does periodically require full water changes, draining and refilling a pool represents a “significant cost.”

The Kate Kuhns Aquatic Center is a 200,000 gallon pool — almost four times the size of Seldovia’s — with a maximum occupancy of 79. Lyon said the annual operating costs for utilities alone are approximately $127,500, or $10,625 per month. 

“That’s electrical, lighting, the pumps — it’s a bigger pool,” he said. “Each pool is a different size; there’s different details for each one.”

Seldovia’s pool, on the other hand, is what Lyon called a “small pool” at 59,000 gallons and a maximum capacity of 35 people. In the draft lease agreement with the Seldovia Recreation Service Area, he outlined an annual operating budget of $120,000, which would cover “everything” including utilities and a pool manager’s salary. 

“Their usage is less because they’re not trying to operate so many hours a day,” he said. “They’re paying for a pool manager, but the manager would have fewer hours — about five hours a day.”

Lyon said the annual utilities cost for the Seldovia pool is $60,562.

Currently, the Kate Kuhns Aquatic Center charges fees for community pool use: $5 for youth ages 3–18 and seniors age 65 and older and $6 for adults aged 19–64. Children two years old and younger are not charged. 

Pool user fees go to each pool’s 710 account, which helps to cover expenditures including pool chemicals, supplies, equipment and lifeguard payrolls. According to a KPBSD presentation from January, other revenue sources deposited into the 710 accounts have historically included building use fees, lane rentals, donations, punch card purchases, swim lessons and grants. 

Overdorf said they would likely need to raise fees for lap swim and open swim in the future. The January KPBSD presentation also raised consideration of increasing user fees to offset pool operation costs.

Lyon said that, in their proposals, most of the communities are requesting that the pool operate for a period of time out of existing funds in their respective 710 accounts to help with the transition.

As of December 2025, the Homer pool 710 account balance was approximately $85,000.

Under district operation, pool staffing and utilities have been paid out from the KPBSD general fund.

Insurance currently poses one of the main challenges to transitioning pool management from the district to KSC. Overdorf said Wednesday that, despite expanding its search, obtaining additional insurance beyond what KSC already has to cover its own activities is proving “next to impossible.”

Staffing poses another challenge to continued pool operations. Existing pool employee positions funded by the district will be eliminated as of June 30. To fill in some of the gaps, KSC is evaluating whether they can spread out some of the responsibilities among their own staff and volunteers.

“There’s ways we can do it, but we’re having to think about changing some of our structure around so that we could manage it,” Overdorf said, noting the difficulty of finalizing plans or hiring staff until the outcome of its proposal is known.

Lyon said Tuesday that he has received proposals for five of the seven district-operated pools — Homer, Seldovia, Seward, Kenai and Skyview Middle School. Ninilchik and Soldotna have not, to date, submitted proposals for their pools.

Community proposals were initially submitted to the borough before going to the school district. Lyon said that he received the proposals from the borough last week and was keenly aware of the looming end-of-funding deadline on June 30. 

“We got some of these pretty late in the process,” he said. “I’ve been working on this issue for over a year; it came down to this month in getting submittals.”

He said the district is working through the proposals “as quickly as we can” while also dealing with school closures and consolidations ahead of the next school year. 

“We’re just trying to eat this elephant one piece at a time,” he said. 

Conversations and work done so far on each proposal have required collaboration between the respective communities, the borough and the school district. School facilities are owned by the borough but operated by the school district; historically, the borough has also provided in-kind funding to the district for maintenance of school facilities. If community proposals are accepted, each respective community or organization taking over management of the pool would lease the pool facility from the district.  

Lord said she “felt really strongly” that, since the pool and Homer High School are borough-owned, school district-run facilities, the path forward needed to include keeping the borough engaged.

In April, after the district adopted its preliminary budget for fiscal year 2027 and finalized the decision to close school pools, Micciche said he’d been speaking with groups interested in taking over pool management, and that he thought the pieces were there to cover the district’s cost and ensure that “primary pools” would stick around.

Since then, Micciche’s office has acted as a bridge between community proponents and the district in what he called “a community service,” helping to facilitate discussions and work out arrangements.

“I felt like we had the talent and the bandwidth and personnel to pull this together with these individuals,” he said. “I appreciate the school district being willing to partner with the borough and communities to get something on paper. I think we have something well worthy of review at this point.”

During Tuesday’s assembly meeting, Micciche reiterated that he thought some pools would stay open.

“I think they’re good agreements. We’ll see what the district wants; maybe they like them the way they are, maybe they want some adjustments,” he said. “There’s good progress, and we should be on time for the end of the fiscal year.”

On Wednesday, Micciche said the borough and school district would “get back together at the beginning of next week” and would hopefully have good news for the communities.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough does not have its own recreation powers. However, a third party contracting with the school district to maintain pool operations creates a “clear path” for the borough to continue funding facility maintenance. 

Micciche said that the borough “will be partners in this pool effort” by continuing to fund maintenance.

Non-district-operated pools can also operate through a recreational service area — for example, the Nikiski Pool falls under the North Peninsula Recreation Service Area. Seldovia also has a recreation service area that has submitted a proposal to take over management of the Susan B. English School pool. 

The KPB Assembly approved a 0.75 mill rate increase for the Seldovia Recreational Service Area on June 2, the second increase in two years. Last year, when the school district first proposed defunding school pools, the assembly approved a 0.25 mill increase for fiscal year 2026 “specifically designed for keeping the pool open and running,” according to assembly member Willy Dunne, who represents the southern Kenai Peninsula. Dunne also said that the new 0.75 mill increase came at the request of the Seldovia community.

The total SRSA mill rate for FY2027 is now set at 1.75 mills. 

Community spokespersons leading the effort to preserve Seldovia’s pool did not respond to requests for comment before press time.

Ninilchik considered a ballot proposition last fall that would have created a new service area to fund recreation activities, including the Ninilchik School pool. The ballot measure was voted down by nearly 70% of affected residents. 

Both Lord and Overdorf said that the possibility of a Homer recreation service area came up in conversations with the borough but doesn’t seem viable at this time. With the “critical” reauthorization of a portion of city sales tax to fund the Homer Accelerated Roads and Trails Fund coming up on the ballot this fall, Lord said she didn’t think the Homer area was “in an environment to propose” an additional tax for voters to decide on.

“That’s a critical piece of our tax structure for our road maintenance, road and trail building and maintenance — so (a service area) isn’t going to be a this-year sort of thing, but those will be long-term questions of, how do we keep this going?” she said. “If the people of Homer want to add that in as an additional revenue stream, then that’s a conversation.”

Overdorf said that the swim club is open to partnering with another organization to maintain pool operations.

For coastal communities like Homer and Seldovia, community pools aren’t just an outlet for recreation. In the state that leads the nation in drowning death rates, they’re tools to teach water safety. Community pools also foster wellness for children learning to swim and adults working to develop healthy lifestyles.

“Water is in our daily life, and so anything that we can do to prevent accidents by supporting swimming classes, boating safety, cold water survival classes, anything like that is really, really important,” Derotha Ferraro said.

Overdorf agreed.

“The community should understand what an important piece of infrastructure this is,” he said. “We live on the water, in a marine industry (and) fishing town, and we can’t keep our pool funded.”